


addicted to you

by nonbinarynino



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Angst, Bad Decisions, Crimes & Criminals, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Robbery, Strangers to Lovers, Unhappy Ending, Unhealthy Relationships, hunk and romelle both have appearances but dont speak, keith does too but hes not even named
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-03 16:18:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15822513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarynino/pseuds/nonbinarynino
Summary: He pushes back into a more relaxed position against his chair. "I could use a girl like you, Pidge," he tells her. His eyes don't leave hers, a contact that's most exhilarating, and she finds herself wondering just how deep into this she's willing to go.-Or, the one where Pidge follows a pretty-eyed stranger named Lance into a crime spree and everything goes haywire.





	addicted to you

**Author's Note:**

> Before you read this - don't think about the logistics of it too hard, because then you'll realize that none of this makes any sense. It's not supposed to. Is Pidge's laptop a super laptop? I have no fucking idea. You can't exactly google how to become a serial criminal in 2018 and expect people to give you accurate answers y'know. Just immerse yourself in the Plance, man.
> 
> The Mature rating is just for the sex implications and gun violence - I probably could have gotten away with a T rating but didn't want anybody to not know what they were getting into! There's frank talk of "I had sex with ___" but its basically just that - referenced and in passing. There's no actual explicit porn/sex/etc.

Pidge has always figured that she has a good life. She still lives at home, which she would probably resent if it weren't so convenient. Once she gets her PhD and lands a job that can sustain her, she'll move out into her own place, but she's been taking classes full time ever since she graduated high school and hasn't been able to really  _get_ a job yet. She knows that her parents don't mind, since they know that she's not freeloading, but she still aches to have some sort of independence. Matt's been on his own since he was barely nineteen, and she  _wants_ that. She wants to have her own place, with her own furniture, and her own schedule... Someday, though. Someday  _soon._

"How were your classes today, Katie?" her mother asks as the two of them set the table, waiting for her father to get home from work. He works at the police station, and he often doesn't get home until after the two of them are well on their way to bed. He'd promised today that he'd be home by eight, though.

Pidge blinks at the small talk. Whenever she and her mother are alone together, they often fall into a pace of quiet comfort. Diverting from that is surprising, though not necessarily unwelcome. "Good," she says. "One of my professors got on my case for poor detail on a lab, though. I made it up pretty quick." She doesn't bring up that the reason she'd done a poor first draft was because it had been  _boring._ All of the work is so dreadfully exhausting, and honestly, the only reason that she's still getting a PhD at this point is because her family has already spent all of the money on it.

"That's good, then," her mom replies, smiling at her as she clanks forks and knives down at the different places. "I'm so proud of you, you know that? Getting a PhD by next year is... woah. It's so extraordinary!" The praise is nowhere close to being new, but it's always nice to hear. Having parents that support her studies is something that she's always been lucky to have.

There's a knock at the front door that interrupts them, but it opens before any of them can actually go greet the visitor. In comes Matt, cheeks red from the cold as he shrugs off his jacket. "Hey Mom, hey Pidge," he greets, hanging it up on the coat rack. "Sorry if I'm late. Is Dad home yet?"

"You're right on time," Pidge tells him, bounding towards him for a hug. She and Matt have always had a really good relationship, even when they were bickering all the time in high school. "Nice to see you."

"It's always nice seeing you," Matt says with a grin. "I saw Shiro this morning at the coffee shop, he said to tell you hi. Apparently Dad's been a stress case at work and getting on everybody's nerves."

Pidge laughs, but her mother doesn't. "Oh, Shiro didn't tell you that, did he?" Colleen says, voice thick with annoyance. "Don't tell your father that when he gets home, he'll be upset."

"Shiro didn't tell me  _anything,_ " Matt explains, walking forward to leave a kiss on his mother's forehead. "I guessed, and he was too nice to confirm or deny it."

The doorbell rings, so suddenly that it startles Pidge. Luckily, she has nothing in her hands that she can drop. "Is that Dad?" she asks, not necessarily to either of her family members in particular. "It's unlocked  _and_ he has a key."

"Whoever it is, will you answer it, Katie? I'm going to go get the ziti." Her mother exits the dining room, leaving Pidge and Matt alone. He shrugs at her, as if to say  _hey, I don't live here anymore, you can't make me do it._ So she flips him the bird and goes back to the door. They don't have a peephole, which sure would come in handy, so she just has to go for it.

She's not sure who she's expecting to be at the other end of the door when she opens it, but it's not who ends up being there. He looks to be about her age, though much taller than her. With his hair brushed out perfectly and his button-up perfectly maintained, she wonders if he's always this put-together or if it's just when he's ringing doorbells. When he catches her eye, he grins at her, confidence radiating off of his mere presence. 

"Is this the Holt residence?" he asks, voice having a surprising boyish spark to it. He peers behind her, as if trying to gauge who lives here by the decor.

"Yes, it is," Pidge replies, and she crosses her arms over her chest. If he's asking about specific last names, he might not be the typical missionary knocking at random doors. "Who's asking?"

"Lance Stafford, ma'am," he says, and extends a hand. She shakes it, if not a little hesitantly. His grip is firm, but not to the point where she feels like her bones will crack. "I'm looking for a Katie Holt. Does she live here?"

"That would be me," she answers, squinting at him. Why would someone be ringing her doorbell at seven-thirty in the evening looking for  _her_? "What do you need?" Forgive her for not being too polite, because she's  _hungry_ and really wants some baked ziti right about now.

"Let whoever it is in!" her mother's voice calls from the other room, loud and demanding. "It's too cold to be out there for long!"

The guy at the door - _Lance,_ apparently - grins at the instruction. "I guess you gotta let me in now," he says, but he makes no move to enter until she steps aside and gestures to the dining room. When he steps inside, he immediately looks around, eyes falling upon the set table. "Oh, I'm sorry if I'm interrupting anything," he apologizes, though he does not actually sound that torn up about it. He sees Matt, and immediately extends a hand towards him. "Hi, I'm Lance."

"Matt," is the answer, and they shake hands, too.  "Are you trying to inform my sister about the ways of God or something? 'Cause I might film it."

" _Matt,_ " Colleen scolds, stepping in from the kitchen with hand mitts clutching the warm pan. "Hello, Lance, I'm Colleen. Katie's mother. Why are you asking for her?"

"You're as radiant as your daughter, ma'am," Lance says, his earlier grin replaced with a kinder smile. The weird double-compliment makes Pidge's ears burn, which she hopes that nobody notices. "I'm affiliated with the University of Vermont, where I believe your daughter is getting her doctorate, correct?"

"That's right," Pidge cuts in, not really the type to let people talk about her while she's still standing right there. "How can I help you, sir?"

"Oh, I'm much too young to be a  _sir,_ " he tells her with a laugh, fake but with the air of being polite. "I was told that you were someone that could help me out with some of my...technological issues, and I was in the area so I thought that I would stop by."

"Okay," she responds, nose bunched in confusion. "Um, you could have just emailed my school email, though? Or called, if whoever it was gave you my number with my address."

"I'm afraid that I'm not the fondest of technological communication," Lance explains, and the fancy wording is enough to make Pidge raise an eyebrow at Matt, who returns it. It's such a stark difference from the humorous tone just seconds before. "I figured that I could see who you are in person, see if I wanted to work with you."

Something about him must impress her mother, because she clasps her hands together in contentment. "Oh, that's perfectly alright! Would you like to stay for dinner? We're waiting on one more person and then we should be good to go." That's enough to make Pidge double take. Her mother, though kind to everybody that has been introduced to her, has never offered to let a  _stranger_ stay for dinner. Knowing her mom, though, she must have noticed the similar age between the two and decided to do something about it. Though Colleen completely supports her schooling, she  _also_ is a hopeless romantic, known for trying to drag Pidge on as many "my friend's kid" dates as possible.

Lance, to Pidge's relief, shakes his head with another polite laugh. "That's very nice of you, ma'am, but I unfortunately have a prior engagement. Katie," he says, and turns back to her, "would you meet me for coffee tomorrow, at Aroma Mocha? To talk about working together?"

It's a bold request, considering that she hasn't even said  _yes_  to what he had been talking about just a second ago,but she shrugs. She doesn't have class tomorrow, and her life can't get any  _more_ boring, so why not? "Okay," she agrees. "Ten?"

"Ten," he confirms, and grabs her hand, leaning down to press a kiss to the back of it. "Don't even bring your wallet." There's something that he wants from her - something  _hard,_ more difficult than any IT problem. She can tell that almost instantly from the formally polite behavior, the slight flirtation. She doesn't know  _what_ he wants, though, but she supposes that it can't hurt to find out.

When he leaves, her mother grasps her by the shoulders. "I like him," she says, as if that hadn't been clear with the request to have dinner with them. "I think that you should keep him."

"I don't  _know_ him," Pidge explains with a roll of her eyes. "Plus, didn't you think that was kind of shady? Showing up to our house instead of leaving a call? Not being 'fond' of technology? Like, what? Is he  _eighty_?"

Matt snickers at her. "You're just trying to find an excuse to not go on a coffee date with the guy who's trying to woo you, Miss Twenty-Two-And-Hasn't-Dated-Since-High-School."

"Shut up! _Shut up_!"

When her dad gets home just a short time after, Matt tells him about Lance. "Huh," her dad says, eyebrows knitted together as if he's trying to solve a puzzle. "Shiro brought up the name Lance today. What did he look like?"

"Taller than me, Latin American, brown hair," Pidge says before stuffing her face full of pasta. She's never been known for her patience. "Though, to be fair,  _everyone's_ taller than I am." Her mother gives her a pointed look for talking with her mouth full, but she just grins back, food in her teeth and all.

"I'll ask Shiro about it," her dad says after a moment. "Maybe we've worked with the university at some point and I'm just forgetting. Anyway, how was your day?"

 

* * *

 

"My dad says that he recognized you from somewhere," she says when they meet for coffee the next day, curled over her mocha. Lance seems less formal than he had been the day before, but still very clean and orderly. He's traded the button-up for a plain t-shirt, though. Funnily enough, they've been talking for at least ten minutes, and he hasn't even _mentioned_ whatever he wants her to do for him yet. It's almost like this is a date or something. "Have you worked with the police department before?"

He smiles, as though she's said something funny. "I've met with them before," he says, and that answer seems to be definitive. "Tell me, Katie, how does somebody get to be halfway through a PhD at the age of twenty-two?"

She flushes, the way that she does whenever she talks about this. "I graduated high school at sixteen," she explains, tone only a little bit awkward. "I was young to begin with, and then I just took enough classes to graduate a year early. After that, I enrolled in a combined bachelor's/master's degree program at UVM. That ended last year, so I'm getting my doctorate's now. Oh, and, um, you can call me Pidge, if you want. Most of my friends do."

"Pidge," he repeats, and a surprisingly dorky smile reflects across his features. "I like it. And you're getting your degree in computer science, right?"

"Right," she confirms. "I've got two more semesters to go, and then I'm done."

"I'm impressed by you," Lance says, but he doesn't say it as though it's a grand revelation or anything. He says it as though he's simply stating the weather. He folds his arms close to his body, leaning near her as if to whisper a secret. "Do you have any experience, with, ah... using computers to get to restricted data?"

 _There_ it is. She grins, almost relieved by where this has gone. If he had gone through all of this trouble just to tell her that he needed his computer fixed but didn't want to spend the money on it, she would have  _lost_ it. "You can say the word  _hacking,_ you know," she says, unable to keep the pleasure out of her voice. He blinks at her in something akin to warm surprise. "And, well, yeah. I've had a side job or two."

He pushes back into a more relaxed position against his chair. "I could use a girl like you, Pidge," he tells her. His eyes don't leave hers, a contact that's most exhilarating, and she finds herself wondering just how deep into this she's willing to go.

"What would you want me to do?" she asks. She has some ideas - deleting some lost accounts off of the internet, fucking with an old ex or an abuser, but she won't offer any guesses in case she's way too far off.

In the end, it's a good thing that she doesn't guess out loud. "Oh, you know," he says, even though she doesn't know at all. "You'd come with me. Help me with getting past some pesky firewalls, no big deal." He leans forward, to the point where they're only a few inches apart. She curls her hands around her cup of coffee instinctively. "And if I need it ... some footage deleted. Like it was never there. All of this would be paid, of course."

The implication weighs heavy in Pidge's heart. Her eyes widen and she withdraws a little, completely baffled by where the conversation has gone. This is way past her pay grade now, but there's something that keeps her from saying no and getting up. Maybe it's the way that he's looking at her, as if he actually  _needs_ her, or maybe it's the memory of his lips on her hand, but she can't get up.

"How long-term?"

He shrugs, looking away as if she's just asked him about his day or work or something similarly mundane. "As long as you would want. I'm in this for the long haul, but if you want to opt out after a week or a month or whatever, that's fine. No ill will. I'd  _prefer_ it if you didn't rat on me, of course, but even if you did, I'm confident." He grins at her, and she realizes that he feels as though he's about to embark on a game that just happens to have rather high stakes.

She takes a sip of her drink, mulling it all over. A week didn't sound that bad. She'd only miss one class, and she could potentially come back with enough money to get her out of her parent's house  _soon,_ without having to worry about some minimum wage day job. And, well... she  _has_ been awfully bored.

"How'd you really find out about me?" she finds herself asking, propping her arm up so that her chin rests on the back of her hand. "Since all of that UVM talk is clearly total bullshit. How far did you travel to find me?"

Lance sips his own drink, then, as if he wants to avoid answering for longer. "I heard about you online. Local twenty-two-year-old going onto her PhD. You were clearly very intelligent, so I asked one of my friends who's  _actually_ affiliated with the school to look into you, see if you'd be against something like this. He, well, was one of your clients for your 'side job', so I figured it was worth a shot to meet you in person."

Pidge connects the dots fairly quickly. She'd helped a TA on the down low, destroying an ex-girlfriend's data who had threatened to leak his personal pictures for revenge. "Hunk," she says, nodding slowly. "That was fun, actually. Though now that I know it was a trick, I'm wondering who I  _actually_ hacked into."

"Technically, me," Lance says, and lets out a hearty chuckle. "We set it all up. Don't worry, you didn't ruin anybody's day. Hunk's a good guy. He's the reason we can talk so freely right now." He jerks his head up to the left corner, and she glances up at it. The security camera on the ceiling isn't blinking red, like they all do when they're recording. She hums in recognition, turning back to him.

It's at that point that her phone on the table buzzes, first just once, and then two more times consecutively. When she looks down to read the notification, she sees that it's Matt.  _Katie get out of there,_ the first one reads.  _Pidge please check your phone Shiro knows him he's dangerous_ and  _PLEASE PLEASE GET OUT OF THERE_ follow it. Before her phone can go dark again, it starts to buzz repeatedly as Matt calls her.

"You can go, if you want," Lance offers, having leaned over to read the messages. "I'm not the type of dangerous that can't take no for an answer. Either way, it seems that we're on a time limit." He doesn't seem too worried about it, which isn't actually really that surprising at all. He has the air of someone who either knows exactly what he's doing, or is really good at pretending that he does.

"So if I say yes to _one_ week, right now," Pidge says, a bit slowly, slightly nervous of what he'll say in response, "what happens next?"

"Well, call me presumptuous," is the answer, and he takes another sip out of his drink, the delay almost going on too long for her to handle. "But I'm hoping that you can leave your phone right there, and get in my car with me. And we can drive very, very far away."

This should be the part where she says no. This should be the part where she tells him to get the hell out of here, because if she knows Matt, he's already a minute away. This should be the part where she realizes that she's an idiot for even considering something like this. But she  _knows_ what type of money comes out of this type of thing, even if she's only in it for one week, and she's so tired of living at home at twenty-two. Plus, she's known Hunk for over a year, and she knows that he wouldn't do any work for somebody too violent or scary, him being a scaredy-cat himself. Maybe she'll regret this in five hours and demand that she go back home. Maybe she won't.

Pidge stands, abrupt, leaving him to follow suit. "Okay," she tells him, and he breaks out into a grin so stunning that she wonders if he should be a model instead of a criminal. "Fuck it. Fuck it all. Okay."

Lance takes a step closer to her, leaving his hand on her lower back. "Let's go, dearest," he says, the pet name said with a teasing pitch. She laughs, despite the situation, and lets herself be led out.

When they reach the parking lot, he gestures to a black Ford, backed into the spot as if he'd suspected needing a quick exit. He opens the passenger seat door for her with a lavish twirling of his hands, as if he thinks it's hilarious to emphasize how dramatic all of this is. She doesn't share the same amusement, but that doesn't stop her from biting her lip to avoid a smile forming. She climbs into the passenger seat, twisting to look into the backseat. She'd expected to find it empty, assuming that this is a rental car, but there's a  _laptop_ in the back.

"A present for you," Lance says when he gets in the front seat, nodding his head to the computer. "Hunk fucked with it a little bit so that you can do more stuff with it than a normal laptop. You might wanna grab it to keep it from flying."

She does so, holding it close to her as she buckles her seat belt. Lance is already driving by the time that she places it on her lap, one hand firmly holding it down. He doesn't drive too fast, probably because of the attention that it would bring if he did, but he certainly doesn't drive  _slow_ either. By the time they're out on the main road, he's going five over. "Next stop, Route 89," he announces, and to her surprise, he lets out a wordless shout, one that portrays the excitement that she feels somewhere within, thrumming and tangible.

She lets out a  _whoop_ of her own, if not just because she's riding off of his own high, and his laughter intensifies all of it.

 

* * *

 

The two of them never really have a stage where they're friends.

That's not to say that Pidge doesn't like Lance's company, because she does. And that's not to say that  _he_ doesn't like her, because she's pretty sure that he does, too. It's just that, er, well... 

They end up in Pennsylvania that night, returning the rental car in Philly and renting another one from another company. They drive to what must be the only motel around that will take cash, and she pretends not to notice how sketchy the "lobby" is. (Pidge notices that Lance's ID  _definitely_ does not have the name Lance on it when he shows it to the receptionist, but she refuses to comment on it.) It's not that bad, for a motel - the two beds are clean and comfortable, the room itself looks well-kept, and there are a bunch of shampoos for her to steal.

She figures that the next few weeks are pretty much mapped out. She'll spend a week with Lance, letting him do whatever his ego permits and getting a cut of it. If he gets caught, she almost certainly has to confirm going with him, but she doesn't have to say how much of it she'd been aware of. Considering the fact that he's masterminded the whole thing, she doesn't  _think_ that he'll namedrop her. It certainly wouldn't help his case that much. After the week is up, she'll go back to Vermont, and he'll keep doing this until he's either behind bars or satisfied.

It doesn't seem that scary, now that she's here with him. It's only a  _week._ How horribly can a week go wrong?

"I guess we should go to bed," Lance says, once the time is somewhere past midnight. "Big day tomorrow, yeah?" The two of them are sitting in two comfy chairs by a table, with a map of the store spread out. They already have a big enough plan for tomorrow - a jewelry store directly out of the city, where there will be less cameras out on the streets. The ones that  _are_ there can be tampered with, of course, but doing one in downtown Philadelphia would just be asking for trouble.

Pidge isn't sure what possesses her to do it, but she leans over and presses a kiss to his cheek. Perhaps it's the fact that she already feels so  _adventurous,_ taking this "job", or maybe it's the fact that she knows she'll probably never see Lance again after the next few days go by, but the fact that she's only ever kissed one boy five years ago doesn't seem so important now. "Goodnight, Lance," she whispers, and tries to pull away. However, she stops trying when he hooks a finger into her shirt collar and tugs her back in.

She's not sure how she ends up in his bed. She really isn't.

 

* * *

 

"The cameras out on the street are all currently malfunctioning," Pidge says as she slams away at her laptop keyboard, still cooped up in the motel room. "Now's your window for getting inside. You'll need to be inside before I cut the power."

"On it," Lance's voice comes through the speaker. She'd already remotely shut off all of the cameras inside, except for one that she would be using to monitor him. She'd done the same with one of the ones on the street, just in case anyone comes to try and stir up any trouble for the two of them. She watches him enter the building, and he does so slowly, as if he's trying a bit too hard to act natural. The weird thing about Lance is that he isn't bothering with any sort of disguise or anything at _all_ to cover up what he looks like. In fact, he's wearing exactly what he'd been wearing yesterday, with the difference being that he's wearing gloves now. It's almost like he wants the fame, like he _wants_ people to scramble around looking for him.

She's been monitoring the camera feed for twenty minutes now, as they'd been waiting for a time where the cashier was the only person in the front room. Any employees in the back will surely _stay_ back there once they hear the mentions of a gun. Or at least she hopes so. She doesn't want any more people than necessary being involved in anything traumatizing, and if she thinks about it too hard, the disconnect between her emotions and her logic is harder to maintain.

It only takes a few more lines of code for the power in the building to go completely out - her inside camera being rendered useless, though her exterior one still works. It's worth it, though, to have the panic button be inaccessible. She hears the sound of fabric rustling through the speaker, and then a feminine gasp. "Open the cash register," Lance demands, voice dark. "Come on!"

She checks her one working camera. There's an elderly woman on the street with a dog, who stops in her tracks after hearing the loud tremor of Lance shouting. Her hand hesitates over her back pocket, where her phone must be. "There's someone by the side entrance about to call the cops," Pidge tells him. "I'd get out now before she turns the corner and you have to deal with another witness."

He lets out a grunt in what must be confirmation, because a second later she sees him appear in her camera's view, walking backwards with his gun still pointed within the store. When he's finally all the way out, he tucks his gun back into his shorts and runs, briefcase presumably full of money in his hand. "I'll be back in five minutes," he says through the speaker, sounding a little out of breath. "We gotta be out of the state by the time any of this breaks out, 'kay? Be ready to go."

"Okay," Pidge agrees, and cuts out her mic. She packs up the laptop and stuffs the few articles of clothing that they have into bags - this had been so last minute that she hadn't even packed a change of  _clothes._ She doesn't even have her wallet with her, for fuck's sake, since Lance had told her to leave it at home when they went to get coffee. Now that she thinks about it, maybe he'd done that on purpose.

He ends up getting to the motel in just three minutes, and the sweat on his forehead when he opens the door is enough to tell her that he probably fast-walked the whole way here once it had been too suspicious to keep running. "Come on," he says, and it's so much  _softer_ than the last time that he had said that sentence, a gun in his hand as he had shouted down a cashier. She flushes when she thinks about the night before, something that they haven't spoken about. It's not like she's going to fall in  _love_ with him or anything idiotic like that, though, so it's probably for the best that they pretend it didn't happen.

She follows him to the car, getting in the passenger seat and putting the bag in the backseat. "Where's our next stop?" Maybe Maryland or Delaware, since they're both close. Lance doesn't answer her when he gets in, though, nor does he start the car, he just looks at her. "Lance?" she prompts.

He seems distracted, but he jerks out of whatever it is. "What, babe? Oh - we're going to Ohio. Should be two nights there, and then we'll head to Missouri. Sound good?"

"Sounds fine," she agrees, though her eyebrows crinkle at the pet name. He'd said it with such a breeze that she wonders if it's just something he calls  _all_ women. Regardless, it brings a flush to her cheeks.  _You've known him for less than forty-eight hours,_ she tells herself.  _Sure, he can be someone you fool around with and work with, but that's it. You're never seeing him again six days from now._

The drive itself is over eight hours, and she kind of expects them to be horribly boring, but they're not. Lance is good enough of a driver, if not a bit too speedy. He doesn't talk about the next plan or what they've just pulled off. In fact, he talks about  _himself,_ which is surprising. He talks about a movie that he'd watched when he was younger than he can't remember the title of, a restaurant from his hometown (which he leaves ambiguous) that made the best garlic knots that he'd ever had. It's interestingly easy, talking to him about topics that don't have to do with anything at all. They play the game of favorites, where she tells him that her favorite food is peanut butter cookies and he tells her that his favorite movie is  _Jaws._ It's highly entertaining, talking to him, since the jokes that he cracks after every few sentences always make her laugh.

A few hours in, she bypasses the password for a nearby Wi-Fi signal and types in a few Google searches, trying to gauge how much has hit the media. A search for "Philadelphia jewelry robbery" shows that the police are actively searching the surrounding area for a man vaguely Lance's description, though the weight and height estimates are pretty off. A search for his name proves nothing, since she doesn't actually know his last name. Searching her name hurts the most, though, because there's a handful of articles about how she's gone missing. Nothing actually points the media in the direction of Pennsylvania, though it's mentioned that she's believed to have been kidnapped. A picture of her that Matt had taken a few months ago is popping up all over the place, his glasses on her face, her grin broad as daylight. It hurts to know that he must be the one spreading it, desperately trying to figure out where she is.

"Do they have anything on us that they shouldn't?" Lance asks from the front seat, glancing over at the screen. "Cute glasses."

"Thanks," Pidge says, but she doesn't smile. The signal dies as they drive out of its range, so she closes her laptop. "And no. They don't."

 

* * *

 

Lance doesn't stop at a motel or anything. He stops outside of a clothing store, and Pidge can tell that its a fancy one without even looking at the clothes inside. The sign is formal and in cursive handwriting, not to mention that it has the word  _boutique,_ which is a word that usually grants an immediate "too expensive" marking on her mental shopping lists. 

"Why are we here?" she asks, squinting inside. There aren't that many people around, but the clothes are beautiful on display. There are sequins, satin, silk: low-cut dresses and slits through dressing gowns. "Are we robbing another place already?"

"No," he tells her with a huff of a laugh. "We're getting you some clothes, unless you plan on wearing that shirt-and-leggings combo for the next week straight."

Pidge frowns and looks down at her clothes. Sure, they're a little wrinkled, and might even smell a little bad, but they've been doing fine for her so far. "Yeah, but  _Lance,_ I can't afford anything from here. Everything's probably at least a hundred bucks."

Lance turns to look at her, then, such an exaggerated motion that it draws her eye to him. He's smiling at her, but maybe it's more of a smirk. "You seem to have forgotten the money you made yesterday, remember? That's at least five thousand dollars right there. Plus, I'll buy you one of them if you promise to let me see you in it." He wiggles his eyebrows like a teenage boy, and she rolls her eyes at him.

"You wish," she says, though she has a stupid smile on her face. "Shouldn't I buy stuff less, I don't know, ostentatious? People will notice when I go back home."

"We can donate them or burn them or put them in a shredder, I don't care," Lance responds. "Now come on, outta the car. I wanna see you in a dress."

There's some sort of flirtatious remark that half-formulates in the back of Pidge's mind, somewhere along the lines of  _I'm sure you do,_ but it catches in her throat somewhere. Lance is... weird. He's good at this "profession," and he's funny and nice enough to her, despite everything. He flirts recklessly, though, and she should know better than to feed into it. Even if she already has.

Lance, to Pidge's chagrin, finds the lingerie section upon arrival, and throws a bra in her direction. She cackles loudly at the display, hoping that they're not acting immature enough to get kicked out of the fancy-schmancy store, and throws it back. "It's not even my size, you idiot," she says, even though she hadn't looked at the tag. She does pick up a few pairs of underwear while they're in the section, though, since as gross as some of her habits are, she doesn't want to wear the same  _everything_ for a week.

Afterwards, she finds a dress shirt and a pair of jeans, arguably the least fancy articles of clothing in the entire store. Lance laughs at her for it and throws a couple of dresses into her arms as he passes by. "You're predictable," he tells her. "Pants are smart, though, because I've heard that it's pretty windy in Ohio."

"Right," Pidge says in response, pulling a sweater off of the rack. It is winter, after all. "Wouldn't want an entire state seeing my underwear. Let's go find a dressing room."

He laughs at her again in the sweater, since it clings uncomfortably to her chest and then droops awkwardly around her waist. One of the dresses is fine, but the sleeves hang and get in her way. The last dress, one of those low-cut ones that she'd seen in the window, looks good on her.  _Too_ good, though. "I don't know," she says through the door, twirling around in the mirror. It goes down to her knees, so she doesn't have to worry about accidentally exposing her butt when she moves too much in the wrong direction, but it's the _chest_ area that's out of her comfort zone, lower than anything that she's ever owned. "I feel like I'm trying too hard to look rich."

"Show me," is his answer. "This is the one I'm excited for!"

Of course it is. He's a degenerate, truly. When she opens the door, it shows on his face, too. He takes one look at the dress before turning bright red and then starts maintaining eye contact. It's funny, how he's  _blushing_ now, even though he'd been the one advocating for her to wear it. He doesn't want her to think that he's staring, and the thought about him _caring_ about something like that is endearing. "I think that you might need to look at the dress to determine whether or not I should get it. Otherwise, you're just guessing."

"Shut up," he huffs. "It looks good. Um, are you comfortable wearing that?"

Pidge shrugs. It's not  _too_ revealing, honestly, it's just that everything that she owned before was more modest than the average person's clothes. "I guess," she says. "It feels like a clubbing outfit, though, and I don't think we're going to go clubbing."

Whatever sort of embarrassment that he had just felt must disappear, because he's back to grinning. "Live it up a little! You can be the most stylish person at the hotel breakfast tomorrow morning. We're too cool for clubs, anyway."

"I've always been too cool for clubs," Pidge says. "Okay, well, I'm going to change back into my clothes, and I guess that we can go. Are you going to get anything?"

"Nah," Lance replies. "I don't think I'll find anything I want that I'm not already looking at."

"You are  _such_ a fuckboy!"

 

* * *

 

The week comes and goes in a blink. She tells Lance when to start running after he takes all of the money from a cash register in a fancy Ohio restaurant, and tells him when the last employee closes up shop at another jewelry store in Missouri. It's exciting, and incredibly surreal when it works each time. She gets this hammering heartbeat, feels her knees start to shake as she sits with her laptop, slamming away at the keyboard. She always thinks that there's no way that he'll get out of this, but he always does.

They don't even say a word when he comes into the hotel room after the second jewelry store. He just grins at her, the small suitcase in hand, and changes out of his shirt. Pidge has their two bags all ready to go, having packed before Lance even left in the evening. It must be about midnight, now. She had looped all of the hotel's security footage with four nights ago, due to the fact it was the one recent night where no hotel guests checked in in the middle of the night, and nobody on their floor went to go to the ice room or something. The lack of activity should keep them covered for at least a while. He should be safe.

She gives him a thumbs up, trying not to look at his chest for too long while he changes into another t-shirt. Once he's done, he stuffs the suitcase into one of the emptier bags, takes it so that she doesn't have to carry it, and kisses her. She's not expecting it, since they haven't kissed since that first time. It's messy and fast and over way too soon, leaving Pidge to wipe her mouth once it's over. He still hasn't stopped grinning at her, as if he's playing a game that he just can't stop winning, and wraps his arm around her back as they head out of the hotel room.

When Pidge makes eye contact with the receptionist in the lobby, she burns bright red with embarrassment. It's late, and it definitely shows on her face how tired she is. Her hair is all frizzy and unkempt, and there had been bags under her eyes when she had looked in the mirror earlier. The receptionist buys Lance's story about them having an early flight, though, talking about how his  _girlfriend_ isn't an early riser with his arm still looped around her waist as if he's truly just some friendly tourist. The receptionist laughs and gives Pidge a sympathetic smile, not commenting on the disarray of her appearance, so Pidge decides that she doesn't mind too much. Lance hadn't minded when he'd kissed her.

Which... is something that Pidge is going to have to deal with, at some point. She's going to have to deal with the fact that he had just kissed her for the sake of kissing her, no ulterior motive. It had been easier when she was pretending that he was just lonely after so much time on the run by himself and had wanted to hook up, but his almost gentlemanly behavior when he had seen her in that dress, that kiss just now - it's getting harder to believe. It's not like she thinks that he's in  _love_ with her or anything dumb like that, since it's only been a  _week,_ but he doesn't look at her like something that he wants to 'hit and quit'.

She's so caught up in her own thoughts that she doesn't notice the staff member loitering behind her. She doesn't notice them raise their phone and take a picture.

"C'mon, babe," Lance says to her, tugging her waist gently. She blinks up at him, torn from her reverie. He's smiling at her, soft, the way that a boyfriend _would_ look at their girlfriend, and she wonders how much of this is acting. All of it, right? "We've got a flight to catch."

"Right, sorry," Pidge replies, and smiles at the receptionist as an apology for spacing out. The receptionist, however, no longer cares about them and is typing something down on her computer. "I haven't gotten much sleep."  _Because I was helping you rob a fucking jewelry store._

The walk to the car is fast enough, even though it takes them a while to find theirs and Pidge trips on a hole in the asphalt. Once they're in the car, another rental, Lance surprisingly doesn't start the engine. "We're in Missouri," he informs her, as if this is new information.

"Correct," she says. "Are you going to tell me what country, too?"

He laughs at her, leaning over to mess up her hair even more. "Your week with me ends in a little less than twenty-four hours, which is about the time that it takes to drive there if we go straight up."

"Okay," Pidge answers, not really seeing what his point is. "Are you saying that you want me to drive half of the way? Because I'm fine with that."

"No, no," he says, shaking his head. "I just - maybe to break up the monotony of it, we could stop somewhere in the middle? Get a hotel for a night or two? Would you mind being a day late?"

Pidge swallows. She's been  _aching_ to hug her family again, to make fun of Matt for when he inevitably cries into her shoulder. Hell, she's even a little fun to spin her tale of what had 'happened' and see how she can get herself out of any trouble. It sounds like a fun challenge. But another night away couldn't hurt, right? All of that would be waiting for her.

"Okay," she says again. "Fuck it, why not? An exact week might be a little suspicious anyway. Ooh, can we stop in Indianapolis? We just drove through it last time, but it's somewhere I've never really been that much, so that would be really cool! Oh - or we could drive up to Detroit, I've never been to Michigan before and that would be pretty-"

"We can do whatever you want," Lance says, and she forgives him for cutting her off because she realizes now that she probably never would have shut up. "We don't have a time limit unless you want one."

"That's a hell of a lot of power," she says in return, and his laughter warms her against the December cold.

 

* * *

 

Their hotel room in Indiana is different than usual. It's nicer than the other ones, with a flat-screen and everything. There are bathrobes in the closet and extra blankets already on the shelves. The biggest difference, however, is that there's only one bed. The receptionist had asked if they wanted one or two, and Lance had said  _just one,_ thanks, and Pidge had been too busy having a crisis to correct him.

Not that it's too big of a deal, after all. Pidge just sprawls on top of the sheets upon arrival and watches as Lance does his surprisingly complicated bedtime ritual - he washes his face, he puts on a skin mask (" _no,_ Pidge, it's a different face mask than yesterday, God, that would be horrible for my skin if I did the same one all the time!") and then he does eye masks and pore strips. When she had asked him how he even had  _gotten_ all of this stuff, he had just grinned and flung his dirty pore strip at her. Shortly after, he'd crashed on his side of the bed and asked what was on the television.

He's really pretty like this, lying next to her. His hair is all messed up from when she'd tried to fake-strangle him with a pillow, and if Pidge were a bit more of a hopeless romantic, she'd probably lament on how much of an ocean his eyes are, blue and bright and energetic. She doesn't realize that she's smiling dumbly at him until he starts grinning, in that way that means that he's got her caught.

"You care about me," he says, and he sounds as though this amuses him immensely. He's almost  _singing_ the words in his mirth, which would probably be cute if it weren't so annoying.

It snaps her out of her reverie. "What? No! Of course I don't," she says, sharp. "That would be stupid."

"No, I'm being serious. You totally care about me, huh? You're in this with me now." He reaches over and tugs her next to him, so that their noses are barely touching.

"Shut up," she says. "You're speaking nonsense."

He laughs, the low, husky kind that comes with sleepiness, and kisses her. It's ... different, than the other times, weirdly enough. Usually, it's rushed and burns like fire, as if their entire non-professional relationship is fast-paced and invigorating. Until just now, that's exactly what Pidge would have used to describe it. But when he kisses her this time, it's slow and calm, as if they have all of the time in the world. He moves a hand to her cheek and runs his thumb back and forth against her skin, almost a soothing gesture.

"I'm just saying, babe, you'll be better off if you forget about me," he says after they part, and his lip quirks to show that he's at least mostly joking.

"That won't be hard," she teases back, quiet due to how close they are. His hand is still on her cheek, and she hopes that he can't feel how hot the skin is.

Lance squints a little, looking back and forth between her eyes. "You're going home tomorrow."

"I am," Pidge agrees. She'd expected to be home a few days earlier, since that had been the deal, but they'd been on the other side of the country then. "We're heading back to Vermont first thing in the morning, right?"

He hums in response. "We can," he says. "Or you can stay. Stay with me."

That would mean missing more classes, making her parents worry more than they are already going to. "For how long?" she asks. "Another week?"

He presses a kiss against her forehead, and then another against her temple, until he's just peppering her face with so many kisses that she loses track. "Stay with me," he says again, in-between pecks, a murmur that she barely hears. "For as long as you want. Weeks. Months."

Pidge hesitates, bringing a hand up to his shoulder. "I don't know," she says. "I'd get kicked out of my PhD program."

"Fuck your PhD," Lance says, with enough intensity to confuse her. "Fuck school. Fuck cold-ass Vermont. Stay with me. Have fun with me. Until I inevitably get caught and we have to pretend that I kidnapped you."

Pidge blinks, pulling back. That had certainly taken a turn for the worse. "What?" she says. "That wasn't the plan. I thought the plan was that I went on a drive with you, realized who you were and left that same day, got lost on my way back. I - since when are we planning around you getting caught?"

"We're not," he replies. "But it's a possibility, you know? I don't want you getting caught up in any of this at all. Hell, if you want, you can be my trophy wife from here on out and let me do all of the hard work. I use the guns, you stay in the fancy places and kiss me when I get back. That way, when all of this goes to shit, you didn't do anything."

It takes a while for her brain to catch up with what he's saying. Oh. "You care about me, too," she says, for once at a loss for words. "That's stupid."

"Immensely," he agrees. "I've been doing this for a long time. I don't make that many friends - hell, the only one I have is Hunk, and the only reason that he helps me out is because he knew me before. I know that this is going to end soon, one way or another. I can feel it. So before that happens - let me know you."

It sounds really simple when he phrases it like that, even know she knows that it's anything but. "Okay," she says. "Fine. Whatever. Fuck it. But! One thing - I'm not a trophy wife, okay? Erase that phrase from your vocabulary. I hate it."

Lance laughs, and it sounds truly delighted. He must truly be attention-starved if he's _this_ excited. It makes sense, given what he's been doing with his life. "It's already gone," he informs her, and then he's kissing her again.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, she wakes up to hands on her shoulders, shaking her. "Pidge, babe, baby," someone chants. "We gotta move, yeah? We gotta go."

She groans and turns around, arm flinging over her face to shield her eyes from the light. When she opens her eyes and moves her arm after a brief moment of solace, she sees Lance hovering over her, smiling sheepishly. His words sink in after a moment and she pulls herself into a sitting position, the air cool against her skin once the blankets fall down. ( _Her **skin** , oh my God, where are her clothes?_) "What happened?" she asks, studying him. He's in the same clothes that he had worn to bed last night, except - oh my God, is that an open wallet of cash in his hand? "That's not your wallet."

"It's not," Lance confirms, and leans down to the floor to toss her his sweatshirt and gym shorts. (She'd kidnapped those two articles of clothing for sleep clothes after the first few nights, since fancy dresses don't exactly make good sleepwear.) "I was getting you and I coffee and there was this guy who told the  _clearly underage_ cashier that she had a nice ass so once he left, I, er, mugged him?"

Pidge blinks, pulling on the sweatshirt. "You did  _what_?" she asks, even though she already knows the answer. "Jesus! Did anybody see you? Were there cameras around? There must have been if you did it in  _broad daylight -_ agh, okay, let's go. He's probably already called the cops-"

"I took his phone," Lance says. "I was wearing my gloves and put my hood up, don't worry. I threw it in a dumpster a block in the other direction. We gotta get out of here now, though, okay? I'll buy you a coffee on the way."

"I'm getting a large," she informs him as she pulls on the shorts, lifting her butt off of the bed and sliding her feet to the floor. She roots around tiredly for her shoes as Lance starts packing up - they hadn't planned on doing anything shady in Indianapolis, so all of their stuff is still littered around the room. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Eight-thirty," he answers, handing her the shoes that she'd been looking for. He stops briefly in his frenzied packing to give her a soft look, one that she can't really interpret, but he's back to moving around before she can study him for too long. "You're not really an early riser, huh?"

"No," Pidge admits, and a yawn punctuates her statement. She pulls on her shoes, pushing herself onto her feet. She feels like maybe she should have been shocked awake by the fact that they very quickly have to _run_ , but there's still lethargy in her bones. "There's a reason that I've never taken a class earlier than noon. There was always programming, or homework, or _programming homework_ , or something to keep me up. Or I'd sit on the roof and stargaze. Once I fell asleep and almost rolled off of the roof, but I woke up."

Lance's shoulders shake with silent laughter as he hooks two bags over each one of his shoulders. He doesn't make fun of her for her rambles, which is nice. He only really laughs when she says something unexpected or, in his words, is being "extra cute." "Can you walk, or do I have to carry you?"

He's teasing, but the mental image of him carrying her bridal-style, her face pressed against his chest, is enough to make her stutter. It's a type of intimacy that they don't share, despite the kissing and the flirting, and it's a type of intimacy that Pidge has never shared with  _anybody._ It's not just romantic or sexual, but  _tender._ "I, uh, I can walk, thanks," she says, and he must notice that she's not saying anything witty, because he's smiling at her. Not his flirty grin or his award-winning smirk, but a  _smile._ A real one. It just makes her more flustered.

(She falls asleep in the car. Lance buys her a coffee anyway, and even though it's kind of watery by the time she gets around to drinking it, it still tastes good.)

 

* * *

 

About three weeks in, there's a video on the news of Pidge's parents. Her mom, crying openly while clutching onto her father, who holds her with tears in his own eyes. "If Katie can hear you, right now, what would you say to her?" a voice says, off-screen.

"I'd tell her that we love her, and that we miss her," Colleen says, voice shaking. Sam rubs soothing circles into her shoulder, and Pidge can barely look away. "If there's anyway that you can contact us and let us know that you're safe,  _please_ do it. We just want you to be okay."

"There are rumors that your daughter's been kidnapped, ma'am," the voice says, and the sentence makes Colleen go from crying to sobbing. "If she  _has_ been, is there anything that you'd want to say to the person who's taken her?"

Sam answers, this time, and if he had been able to be passed off as composed before, it ends now. "We just want her back," he says, voice cracking on the word  _back._ "We won't ask any questions. Just give her back."

Pidge exhales with shaky breath and closes the tab. She doesn't tell Lance, and if he finds it on his own, he doesn't tell her.

The media also tells Pidge what the public knows about the robberies. They've connected the fact that a person of Lance's description is behind most of them, (there had been that one instance in Minnesota where they'd described the suspect as a  _redhead,_ which had made Pidge snort) but they don't have any current leads on where he currently is, or if he's working with anybody. The news says that they're searching around Michigan, so they go south, passing through Arizona. Sometimes, they go days without doing much of anything, just driving and eating and sleeping, but then there was that time in Oklahoma where Lance had wanted to rob two places in one day, just to see if he could.

Pidge helps most of the time, keeping track of police and downing security cameras, but sometimes, she sleeps in, and he  _doesn't wake her up_  until it's over.It's happened  _twice_ now. The first time, he had woken her up pretty similarly to how he had woken her up after mugging that creep, with rushed tones and thrumming energy, but the second time, Pidge had just woken up in the backseat of the car with no explanation. She doesn't want to be his "trophy wife," as he had put it, even though she knows the term isn't what best describes all of this, so she helps when she can. She keeps an eye on the police and turns off security cameras, either from her laptop or, in more extreme cases, having to go  _into_ the building as he's robbing it. Lance doesn't like it all that much when she does that, though, so she doesn't do it often.

Lance is a puzzle that she has a hard time cracking. It's hard to deny the feelings that have quite obviously made themselves known, but she doesn't think that they're too... intense? Serious? They kiss a lot, now, and he blushes when he sees her in his clothes, or she'll start stuttering through a ramble when he says something that she's not prepared for. His normal flirting brushes right off of her shoulder nowadays, but it's the  _genuine_ stuff that fucks her up.

She's screwed, she knows that now. It scares her how okay with it she is.

 

* * *

 

When they find a hotel to rest in for a few days, they don't have any plans besides sleeping. It sounds pretty good to Pidge, who could really use a break from the constant run-and-go. For the first night, it's great - Pidge rents a shitty chick flick while Lance showers and forces him to watch the last half with her while he makes over-the-top refusals. When she falls asleep halfway through, though, he keeps watching it, and in the morning tells her about all of the "surprising" plot twists that she had missed out on.

Pidge is really excited for another few nights like that, which is why she narrows her eyes when Lance drapes a ballroom gown over their hotel bed. "Uh," she says, running her fingers over it. It's a forest green with lacy floral designs all over. It's ... pretty, Pidge supposes, in an extravagant sort of way. "Are you going to wear this? You'd look very elegant."

He rolls his eyes at her and drops something else on the bed. It's a similar color as the gown, but it's a mask. "There's a masquerade down the road tonight," he tells her. "The dress is for you! I bribed the ticket seller into giving us tickets even though there's technically some month-long wait list. It'll be fun!"

Pidge groans. "I'm not the type for the mix-and-mingle type of events! I'll spill wine on someone, or accidentally offend some rich person who will try and hire an assassin to take me out. It'll be horrible."

Lance laughs and reveals his own outfit from a garment bag - a classic waistcoat with ballroom pants. His is a navy blue, and Pidge is already upset by the knowledge that he'll look really, really good in it. "It'll be fun," he says again. "Nobody will know that it's us, so we can do whatever we want. Flirt. Make out. Piss off rich people. No one will order a hit on you, jeez, you spend too much time with me."

Pidge huffs. "When does it start?" she asks, already giving up on not going. Declining when he's already bought her a really pretty dress would just be rude.

"Uh," he replies, checking his wrist for a watch that's not there. "Five minutes?"

"I  _hate_ you," she tells him. "I don't know what to do with my hair! I can't straighten it because we don't have a straightener, and I don't have anything to pin it back with, either. I  _could_ just leave it down but then it would get in my face and-"

"I'll braid it," Lance offers. "Or I can do something else with it, if you want. Go get dressed! We can be fashionably late, but  _actually_ late is just rude."

"Okay, criminal," she says in response, but gives him a grin to show him that she's joking. "I'll be sure to note that you're worried about being  _rude_. I call dibs on the bathroom for mirror purposes. You can change out here and suffer."

"Technically, we could-"

"Shut up."

When she comes out of the bathroom, Lance is tying his tie. It's black, and goes nicely against the rest of his outfit. He hasn't put his mask on yet, which is good, because she hasn't either. "Will you help me zip up the back?" Pidge asks, because her arms are short and she can't reach all of the way down. Lance looks at her, and his brain must stutter for a moment, because his mouth opens slightly and he just kind of ... stares. "Hello? Mr. Can't-Be-Late?"

"That's not my last name," he says after a beat, moving over to her. One of his hands finds her zipper, and the other holds the two pieces of fabric together so that nothing will get stuck. However, before he zips it, he presses a kiss to where her neck meets the skin of her back. "You look stunning," he says, honest, and Pidge is suddenly grateful that he's standing behind her, unable to see the look on her face.

"Thank you," she says, and it's  _totally_ not a squeak, shut up. "You, uh, you look good too." It's weird how they've been fumbling around for, what, a month now, and she can go through most of it without blushing  _once_ but then he acts like this and she turns into a disaster.

"Thank you!" Lance echoes, turning her around to face him. "Hmm... what do you want to do for your hair? A bun would be easy. Or I could braid it."

Pidge shrugs, a restricting motion due to her dress's fabric tight around her shoulders. "I don't know the first thing about hair," she confesses, "besides the fact that it grows on my head. So just make me look cute."

Lance makes the expected comment about how her looking cute has  _nothing_ to do with him and quickly realizes that she simply has too much hair to do anything but a braid. He doesn't tell her exactly  _how_ he's so good at braiding hair, (she has two theories: the first one is that he has had experience with sisters and girlfriends, and the second one is that he had a man bun phase) but he's done in just a little bit over a minute. It would have taken Pidge at least five tries to get it all straight, since even though she's fantastic with computers, she can't tell you a thing about cosmetology. 

"We're already late," he tells her, putting on his own mask. To be honest, Pidge had thought that masquerades only existed in middle school dances, but apparently she'd been wrong. "Come on, babe, let's go blow everybody away."

"I think that you mean scare everyone with my terrible etiquette."

 

* * *

 

The surprising thing is that many of the attendees  _do_ end up being blown away by them. Pidge doesn't know the first thing about dancing, so she mainly follows Lance's lead, her hand gently in his as they sway back and forth. At one point, he tries to twirl her, but she fucks it up so royally that they end up having a laughing fit in the middle of the ballroom. They end up in the middle of the room, with everybody leaving enough distance in between them so that Lance can pull whatever extravagant move that he wants.

Which, of course, he takes advantage of. Pidge is left scrambling to keep up with him as he turns her, dips her, and attempts to twirl her again and again until she ends up being somewhat decent at it. People watch them, but no one approaches them, and she's left wondering if that's simply due to social norms or if it's because Lance is looking at her as though she's the only girl he's ever seen.

Obviously that's not true, but it's really not good for her ego nonetheless. Eventually, he calms down with all of his stunts, and they end up just holding each other close, taking small steps as she tries desperately not to step on his toes. "You're better at this than you said you were," he tells her, voice soft as if he doesn't want anybody to overhear them. Not that anybody would, she's sure. "You're a pretty fast learner."

"I grew up with my brother," she says in response, and her lips twitch at the thought of him. "I wanted to be better at him than everything. Not that he even really cared if I was, of course, since he's  _Matt,_ but I cared. I had to be a fast learner so that I could be better at him than whatever he was learning in school before he went on to learn something else."

"So that's where your intelligence comes from," Lance responds, as if he's hooked on unlocking all of the puzzle pieces about her life. "It comes from your own competitiveness."

"Heh, yeah," Pidge says. "That's why school got so boring. I'd already been the best at everything, so it stopped being a competition. I was so eager to go with you when you asked because it seemed like the first _exciting_ thing I'd be doing in years."

"The rush is addictive," he agrees, and when he says it, he presses her impossibly closer to him. His breath is hot against her face when he says, "The thrill of it all. Getting away with it,  _knowing_ that you can. It's one of the best things that I've ever felt."

 _You're addictive,_ Pidge thinks, but she doesn't say it. Not when he's so close to her, because she knows that flirting with him means kissing him and then they get kicked out of this stupid dance. "'One of?'" she asks instead. "What could be better?"

"Well, for starters," Lance says, "you, right now. You, every time that I've touched you."

There goes her plan of not flirting. She almost doesn't want to know, in fear of his answer, but she asks the obvious question anyway. "In what context?"

"All of it. When I kissed your hand for the first time, and my hand on your waist right now. Everything in between, too."

She rolls her eyes. "You are  _such_ a sap," she tells him, and her tone reminds her of the time that she'd called him a fuckboy. She hadn't truly thought that about him then, but even so, she thinks much differently of him now. She feels much more  _strongly_  about him now."How many girls do you talk to like this, huh?"

It's only been a month, and Pidge doesn't think that that's enough time to fall in love, but there's something there. She doesn't know him, not truly, but she's infatuated with what she does know. It's addicting and mesmerizing and so beautifully life-ruining.

"None," he tells her. "Sure, I tell them they're pretty - or handsome, depending. I butter people up. It's fun, it's a game. But with you?" He dips her, then, and she's so unprepared for it that her hands dig into his shoulders to maintain her composure. They remain like that for a moment, her being nearly horizontal with one leg up in the air, (hopefully not flashing anybody) and him with a warm grip on her. The moment ends both too quickly and not fast enough, and he pulls her back up to continue the dance. "You're not a game. You never were, even at the beginning. I thought that maybe I'd need to bat my eyelashes at you a little, but the second that you informed me that I could say the word _hacking,_ I realized that I was way in over my head."

He talks a lot. Usually, Pidge is the one talking - she could ramble all day about her projects or what she has to type in when he's off aiming guns at people. But when it comes to the romance stuff... she never has any idea what to say. "Oh?" she says, if only to prompt him onward.

"You ... you and I are going to end horribly," he tells her, and she's so surprised by it that all she can do is squint up at him. "And I know that that should have stopped me from the get-go. I am living with the excruciating realization that for the first time in my life, I would let this - all of the shit I've been doing for the past three years -  _end_ for you. If you say the word."

"I can't," Pidge says, and lets go of his shoulders to tug him into a kiss. It's only been a month with him, but it feels like it's been forever.

If this ends, that means that she goes home. If this ends, she'll probably never see him again.

She doesn't want that at all.

 

* * *

 

"Let's get married," Lance says.

Pidge blinks once, twice, three times, fork halfway to her mouth. They're at some off-the-highway diner outside of Brattleboro, stuffing pancakes into their mouths. Pidge kind of _hates_ that they're back in Vermont, but it's only for a day or so, and they haven't done anything too incriminating since a month ago in Arizona anyway. The television behind Lance displays the news, which she glances at once but immediately loses interest in. "What?" she asks, unable to tell if he's joking or not. His tone hadn't been joking, but it hadn't been overly serious, either, as if he'd blurted it out too fast to think of a tone to put to it.

"Let's get married," he repeats, but this time she can hear the smile in his voice. "I can work some really boring office job so that we can have an excuse for being super loaded. You can program some websites or some other techy stuff that I probably will never understand. We can get a cat, or two, or five. Pop out a few kids."

Pidge's lips quirk up. It's a nice fantasy, though obviously not a possible one. In the two months that she's spent with Lance, she's learned a lot about him. She knows his favorite foods, what time he usually goes to bed and what time he usually wakes up, and how respectfully he treats waitresses. But none of that is enough to base a long-term relationship off of. She doesn't know what his family is like, or how he feels about politics, or if he's religious. Sure, she could learn those things, but it would feel a lot like playing catch-up.

"We can get divorced for the drama of it all," Pidge says anyway. "And then remarry the next day. Because that's what rich people do."

Lance laughs. "I'm not sure if you've ever met a rich person before," he says in response. "But you're probably right anyway."

Pidge opens her mouth to respond, but her eyes catch on the television behind her. There's a picture on the screen, of a woman and a man. The man has his arm around the woman, who looks-

"Oh my God," she says. "Lance, look."

It's them. It's from that hotel in Missouri, the morning that they'd checked out a little past midnight and made uncomfortable small talk with the receptionist. She can barely catch wind of what the news reporter is saying. "This picture seems to prove what the public has suspected - that Katerina Holt has been kidnapped. The Vermont police force, who have been the primary investigators in her disappearance, have claimed to have an identification on the man who is with her, but have not yet shared it with the public. The pair are also possibly connected to a series of robberies that have been committed throughout the nation, from Pennsylvania to California, though the sincerity of those claims is currently being evaluated. At this point, we are left with wondering why this evidence has taken so long to be revealed, as it is said to have been taken over a month ago. The hotel worker who has claimed to be responsible for the picture has undergone questioning by the local police, but the results from the questioning have not yet been determined."

The longer Pidge stares at the picture of the two of them, the more horrified she gets. She had known that she had looked tired that day, but the picture makes her look ... wrecked. The darkness underneath her eyes is visible even through the grainy photo quality, and her hair sticks in every direction. She doesn't just look tired; she looks as though she's truly been kidnapped.

Luckily, none of the other diners around them seem to be looking at the two of them. Pidge wonders if she's even recognizable from the girl in the picture, since now she has her hair all combed out and tied back, and the clothes that she's wearing are clean instead of all rumpled. It's Lance that she's worried about, since he always looks exactly the same, perfect and polished.

Lance takes out his wallet and drops two twenties on the table, which Pidge thinks is a rather generous estimate of what their bill would have been if they'd stayed. "Let's go," he says.

She's quick to follow.

 

* * *

 

There's no way that she could have known.

She didn't have any movie-worthy ache in her gut,and there was no funny twisting in her stomach. She didn't have any second thoughts or bat an eye anymore than she would have the week prior. Nothing told her to  _run._

Which is why it's such a shock when it happens.

She kisses Lance goodbye when he goes out with a gun hidden under his jacket. In preparation for tonight, they'd deposited all of the money that they'd made so far into Lance's bank account under a fake name, little by little and through a dozen different ATMs in an attempt not to set off any alarms. The suitcase that he carries with him now is empty, but probably won't be for long.

"I'll be back in an hour, maybe two," he tells her, lacing his fingers with hers and tugging her closer. As of late, he's begun to linger at the door before he goes, as if he worries that it's the last time that they'll speak. Pidge thinks that it's ridiculous every time. "It's your turn to pick a movie. What do you want to watch?"

" _Hell Fest_ is apparently good," she says. "If we're feeling like horror. Or  _She's the Man_ is on at nine."

"Pick whichever one you want," he decides, and pulls her close again. One of the most surprising character traits that Pidge has found out about Lance is how  _clingy_ he is, physically and emotionally. "I'll turn on my mic when I get there, okay? Should be five to ten minutes. Can you be ready by then?"

She grins at him. "You know that I can."

It ends up being more like seven minutes. Lance narrates what he's doing, and Pidge makes decisions accordingly. They had spoken about shutting down all of the power, but Lance had doubted the existence of a panic button in a venue like this, and argued that having her 'eyes and ears' was more valuable anyway, since she could just warn him about that type of thing. Pidge agrees, but it does add a weight to her shoulders. She reroutes the security cameras when he gets closer to the premises of the building, opens the door to the venue for him when his makeshift key card inevitably doesn't work. There's only two or three employees in there from Pidge's point of view, and they all still when he enters the building. She watches as they start speaking to him, but she can't pick it up through Lance's microphone.

"Down on the ground," he says, instead of answering whatever they'd asked. He pulls the gun out of his jacket, and even though he holds it close to him, not aiming it anywhere, she can still see it glint in the light. "Down on your knees, hands behind your head."

" _Sir,_ " she hears the employee's voice  _now,_ but Lance seems to wish that he didn't have to, because he aims his gun and shoots it into the ceiling. The sound is loud, almost unbearable to Pidge's ears, but she can still manage to hear the shriek that follows it.

"Hands behind your head," he says again, and the most bewildering part about this is that Lance doesn't sound  _violent._ Firm, maybe. Calm. But not like somebody who is shooting guns.

The cash register opens without a hassle, once he punches in a code that Pidge had observed on the cameras earlier that day. She watches with slight amusement (how she can be  _amused_ right now is beyond her) as he scrambles to dodge the larger bills and grabs a handful of whichever bill is in the middle. Twenties? Fifties?

He's opening his suitcase when she hears it. The voice on the police radio is tinny and barely there, but she catches it anyway. "Oh, fuck," she says. "Someone across the street must have heard the gun go off. You gotta get out of there."

Lance pauses. "Fuck," he agrees, shoving the money in the suitcase with haste. He doesn't even bother trying to fit most of it in before he's slamming it shut. "Which door, babe?"

"Um, uh - back door," Pidge confirms. "The police station is to the north, so take the back door and  _run._ "

"I won't make it in time," he says, as if it's completely inconsequential. "You're going to have to take the car and meet me halfway, okay? We might not even have time to stay in our hotel, we might have to just  _go._ "

Thank  _God_ that Pidge had accidentally forgotten to bring their bags out of the car. "I'll drive there right now. Run fast and you'll see me in three minutes."

She scrambles into the driver's seat, hands slightly shaking as she goes for the keys. She hates driving, always has, never having been good at it. She forgets to check her mirrors when she reverses out of the spot, and prays that she doesn't get pulled over for speeding during her short drive to find Lance.

She finds him after barely a minute has passed, which either means that he's been sprinting like an Olympian or that she's been speeding. She hasn't actually looked at her speedometer. "Lance, holy fuck," she says when she rolls down the window. "Get in!"

"No, switch places," Lance says, and he's grinning at her. "I'm not letting you drive me anywhere, for the same reason that _you_ don't let  _yourself_ drive me anywhere. They're miles behind me."

Pidge rolls her eyes, already opening the door to clamber out of the front seat. Before she can move over towards the passenger seat, he takes her by the hand and pulls her to the side, still beaming as though he's just won the lottery. With the quick motion, his gun nearly falls out of his sweatshirt pocket, but he grabs it before it can clatter and holds it in his other hand. "Pidge," he says, voice deep and thick and  _warm,_ and she wants to hear him say her name like that for the rest of her life, "I am-"

She notices him falling against her before she hears the gunshot, her hands flailing to steady him before she realizes that there's now blood on her shirt. _Why did he just collapse like that_? She cradles him close to her body and gently lowers him to the snow-covered ground, one hand supporting his head as she tugs him into her lap. It's only then, looking down at him, that everything sets in.

Oh no.

"Lance," she says over his ragged gasps for breath. She looks up, tries to look for who could have _done_ this, but she can't see anybody at all. "Lance, oh my God." The hand that's not behind his head finds its way on his abdomen, pressing against the rapidly-growing patch of blood. "Can you hear me?"

"Pidge," comes out of his mouth, but she's not sure if it's an answer to her question or just him saying what he sees. His hand covers hers on top of his stomach, and the contact is wet with his own blood. She feels sick. "Pidge."

"I'm here," she tells him, and even though she feels fat, salty tears dripping down her face, she can't do anything to get rid of them. "Lance, I don't know what to  _do._ "

"Nothing," he says, or she thinks that he says, she's not sure. There are sirens in the background, now, so close that they almost drown out what he's saying, but she can barely focus on them. "Pidge, don't do  _anything._ This is - better than the alternative. I promise."

The implication weighs heavy in her gut, so she shakes her head and lets herself hiccup out a few more sobs. "No, no," she says. "No, Lance, I can't just let you die. Please don't die, I don't know how to go  _back-_ "

"I love you," he interrupts. "You're my girl, yeah? You can - be good now, if you want."

"I don't think that I want that," she tells him, and she doesn't realize how true it rings to her own ears. "I - I don't think that I want that at  _all._ "

"That's my girl," he says, and it strikes her how _weak_ his tone of voice is. He looks like he wants to say something else, but he doesn't. Instead, he takes the hand that had been on his abdomen and brings it to her cheek, leaving a hand print of blood. It's wet and slick and smells sickening, but all she can think about is how shaky his fingers feel as they brush against her skin. He reaches back until he's grabbing her hair, and then he's pulling her into a kiss. His lips are cold and unmoving, even though she can feel little puffs of breath leave his mouth. Why are they so cold?

_"Put your hands where I can see them!"_

"I love you," Pidge says back, even though a week ago she would have said that she didn't know him well enough for that at all. She can't tell how much has changed since then, but the words don't feel like a lie when she utters them now. "I love you, I love you. I'm so sorry that I let this happen, I-"

" _Wait, I know her. Shit, I need to radio Sam._ "

Lance is smiling, but it's faint, just the corner of his lips slightly tugged upward. She figures that it's probably more for her benefit.

"Katie?"

Pidge only looks up after a second, not having connected the voice to something that was actually occurring. It's ...  _Shiro,_ standing there, in his uniform, his gun in his hand instead of at his hip. Looking at him is completely foreign, and it takes what seems like forever for Pidge's horror-addled brain to remember that they're back in Vermont. There's another cop behind him, one who has his gun pointed straight at her. "Shiro?" she says, and she almost pronounces his name a little wrong in the time that it's been since she's last said it. She hasn't seen him in months, even before she left home. "Wh-"

"Put your hands up," the other cop demands again, waving his gun around as if it will help encourage her decision. "Do it!"

"Stop," Shiro says, lifting up his palm in the gesture. In a lower tone, almost as if Pidge isn't supposed to hear, he says to his partner, "you shouldn't have shot him."

"I saw the gun in his hand-"

Gun. Pidge looks back at Lance, whose eyes have shut, and then looks behind him. He had ended up dropping his gun after all, right to the other side of his head. She takes her hand off of his shirt (it makes a moist, ugly sound when she does so) and grabs for it. That guy shot Lance. He  _shot_ Lance.

She doesn't aim the gun when she takes it, just holds it in her blood-covered hand and lets her entire arm droop towards the ground. Maybe - maybe they'll kill her. Does she want that? She doesn't know. She doesn't know  _anything,_ doesn't know how she'll ever go home again, doesn't know how to function after Lance being there with her twenty-four/seven for two months straight. 

"Katie," Shiro says, and he takes a step towards her. "Drop the gun. This doesn't have to end badly."

"You  _shot_ him," Pidge responds, voice rising in hysterics. She can barely hear anything over the sound of her own labored breathing. "He - he's going to  _die_! This will already end _badly._ "

"That wasn't me, Katie. Drop the gun."

Pidge takes one deep breath, and then another, but nothing can calm her rapidly accelerating huffs of air, so she drops the gun, letting it  _thump_ against the snowy concrete. She can't kill Shiro ... not when he's Dad's coworker, not when Matt looks up to him like a brother. "You shot him," she repeats. "He - he's - you can't let him  _die._ Shiro, please, you can't."

"We have an ambulance by the front of the building," he tells her, gentle. As gentle as he had been when Matt had been in the hospital when she was fourteen. "I need you to get away from him, okay?"

"I  _can't,_ " she wails, and she doesn't know if she's comprehensible, but does it really matter? She shakes her head again, this time so hard that it makes her head hurt. "He's - he's there. I can't push him  _off_ of me when he's  _dying_!"

"Fuck this," the other cop says, and Pidge watches him as he pulls out some sort of device. She can't tell what it is in this lighting. "Your method isn't working,  _buddy,_ she's not listening to you."

Pidge curls back into Lance, forehead pressed against his. He's unconscious, or  _dead,_ she can't tell, and the fact that she can't tell is driving her crazy. "He needs an ambulance," she says. "He needs - he needs  _help._ "

"Okay, Katie," Shiro says calmly. "Officer Cunningham is going to get a stretcher and he is going to _put the taser away_ , okay? I'll be right here."

She doesn't let him come closer, not until the paramedics come and put Lance on their stretcher. She starts screaming again at about the same time that he disappears from sight. "He's going to die. You - you let him die. We were fine and everything was  _fine_ and he was smiling and he was about to tell me something and you  _shot_ him!"

"Please, calm d-"

"I  _can'_ _t!"_

"Fuck this," the other cop - Cunningham? - says again, and he walks behind her. She can't see what he's doing, doesn't want to  _look,_ so she just sits there on the cold ground and chokes back sobs. His hands grab her wrists, so hard that she feels like her bones might break, and then she feels the coolness of metal making contact with her skin.

... Oh.

 

* * *

 

She frantically wipes at her face with her upper sleeves, but no matter what she does, the blood just won't come off. Instead, it cakes to her sweatshirt, leaving her no way to get all of it off without just adding to the mess. She can't use her arms, not with the handcuffs, so all she can really do is lean her face down and rub it against her shoulder.

She doesn't really know why she's been handcuffed. It's not that she hasn't done anything wrong, but rather that she doesn't know what they know about. The hacking? The breaking and entering? Or is this all just because she grabbed that gun?

Shiro talks, but she only hears half of it. The words  _your parents_ and  _you're safe_ come through, but her hearing is so filtered that she can't connect the dots about what he could possibly be trying to say. All she can notice is how the handcuffs rattle against the cruiser door with how much she's trembling, and how her heart is beating so fast that she can hear it in her ears.

Cunningham doesn't talk much more after that, but his presence in the cruiser is still very much an unwelcome one. It's almost intense how much Pidge wants to strangle him, wrap where her handcuffs connect to her wrists around his neck and yank back so that he's choking against the car seat.

 _You never would have thought about doing that three months ago,_ the rational part of Pidge's brain says.  _Lance must have been a truly horrible influence if now you're contemplating murder._

 _But I love him,_ the other part says.

Does she?

Objectively, there's no way that she possibly could. It's only been two months, and she doesn't even know his last name or where he grew up or any of those basic things that should come with the first few days of dating. It's a fascination, a desire - puppy love gone way too wrong. That's the only thing that it possibly could be, the only thing that explains just why she had been so  _okay_ with everything. Now that she's in the back of a cop car and Lance is en route to an emergency room, everything seems more bleak. The fire of it is all gone, drained out like water from a sponge.

When Shiro speaks again, she actually hears him this time. "You'll probably have to spend a while in a holding cell, okay? It might be overnight, but it probably won't be much longer than that. Nobody blames you around here." Cunningham scoffs. "Those of us who are sane, anyway."

"Matt," Pidge says, and her voice is raw and cracked as she tries to avoid thinking about being behind bars, "is he okay?"

"He's healthy," Shiro confirms, hesitating around the words as if they're not completely true, "but he isn't taking it well at all. I always joked that you two were connected at the hip, so the fact that you went missing like that... he blames himself."

"Why?"

"He tried to warn you," he says. "Through some messages. We think that you were already gone by the time that they sent."

Messages?

Oh. Pidge remembers those. She'd seen them, and Lance had told her that she could leave if she wanted, and ... and she'd gone with him. "But I-" she says, but cuts off. Maybe it's not really a good idea to tell them that she had been warned before leaving. "I know it's not his fault," she finishes lamely, having had to scramble for a suitable end to the sentence. "Does ... does he hate me? Mom and Dad, too?"

" _No,_ " Shiro says, looking behind his shoulder at her. She opens her mouth to tell him to keep his eyes on the road, (the fact that a thought that mundane even  _comes_ to mind must be a sign that she's slowly calming down) but she realizes that they're already in the parking lot. "Jesus. No. Nothing was your fault, okay?"

The worst part about it is that he genuinely believes it. He, her family, most of the people that knew her - do they all unconditionally believe that she had no say in anything that happened? They have no idea how  _excited_ she'd been, how much she had grown to thrive off of that feeling of anxious elation whenever she was helping Lance get away with something particularly heinous. They have no idea about all of the kisses that she'd initiated, about how she'd stood up to leave that coffee shop before he'd even really explained anything to her. "But it  _is,_ " she tells him, because there's no way in hell that she's letting Lance take the fall for things that  _she_ was a part of. "I did what-"

" _Katie,_ " Shiro says. "You are not going to finish that sentence under any circumstances."

"But I  _wanted-_ "

"Stop. Look in the window to the police station. _Please._ " He sounds like he's begging, so Pidge looks up. She sees the figure in the window, their back to the outdoors. They're tall, but it's not until they turn and their side profile becomes visible that she recognizes them.

"Dad?" she whispers, even though there's no way that he could possibly hear. "Why is he here so late?"

"I radioed him when I first realized it was you. He wanted to come to where we found you, but... I thought it'd be best that you have a minute before anything else crazy happens to you."

She gives him a look of appreciation, even though he's no longer looking at her. "Thank you," she says. "I - can I talk to him or are you supposed to just lock me up?"

Shiro softens, and when he smiles at her, she wonders if he's been just as worried, too. She's always joked that she's the annoying little sister that he never asked for. "Of course you can talk to him," he tells her.

 

* * *

 

Pidge barely gets through the door before there's someone else slamming into her, arms wrapping around her body with reckless abandon. " _Katie,_ " her father says. "Oh, Katie." He doesn't let go for a long time, and even though she can't hug him back, she feels safe in his arms. Her dad has  _always_ promised to protect her for as long as she's been alive, and he's always lived up to that promise, too. She immediately feels herself relax in his arms, as though even though she had wanted differently, this is where she was supposed to end up.

"I missed you," she says, because at least that's true. He pulls away from her, and she sees that blood has gotten on his shirt and arms. God, what must she look like right now?

"Why are you in handcuffs?" Sam asks, turning her around to look at them. "Wh - my daughter's been  _missing_ for two months and you put her in  _handcuffs_?"

"She was unstable, sir," Cunningham says. "And don't forget that she's been charged with aiding and abetting in at least seven different armed robberies."

Oh.

Pidge wonders if one of them had mentioned that to her before, but she just hadn't heard them in their own panic. That means that they know - that they've connected she and Lance to what they've been up to. "Dad, Lance -"

"We don't have to talk about him," her dad says, quickly, and Pidge wonders if it's for her benefit or for his own. "We never have to think about him again, okay?"

"No,  _Dad,_ " she says, "he got shot. I - I need to know if he's okay. Please."

It's almost like everybody in the station goes quiet all at once. She expects her dad's eyebrows to knit together in realization, or for him to tell her that she doesn't have to worry about it anymore. To her surprise, though, he just draws her into another hug. "Oh, honey," he says. "I'm so sorry about what's happened to you. If it will make you feel better, I'll make a few calls later, okay? Once we get you out of here."

"Sam," Shiro says, slowly, "we're not sure if she qualifies for bail just yet. She'll probably have a bail hearing tomorrow morning."

"It's okay, Dad," Pidge says into his shirt, even though nothing is okay at all, "I'm not dangerous or a repeating offender or anything. They'll let me go just fine."

"I  _need_ to have you back home again," Sam says. "If not tonight, then tomorrow. We need to have you safe and at home with us."

Pidge swallows and realizes that she might not be able to tell him the truth just yet, about how willing she'd been to help Lance. Not when he's crying and has offered to check up on him for her. Not when she knows how much better it would be for him for her to be back home. God,  _home,_ she could see her mother tomorrow. She could see  _Matt_ tomorrow. When he finds out the truth, when they  _all_ do, will it just crush them all even more? Forget about hating her, will they hate themselves for letting this happen?

She'll just hold off for a little while. She'll come clean soon enough.

For Lance.

 

* * *

 

After countless times of her father being told that  _no,_ no matter how much he yells, the bail hearing won't be moved forward, Pidge gets transferred to the county jail. It's an... uncomfortable experience. She hasn't been in the premises of a shower yet, and it's been a handful of hours since she had first gotten to the police station, so she feels gross and sweaty and sticky. Bile rises in her throat but stays there, leaving her to feel as though during any moment, she'll throw up.

The process of actually being admitted is ... boring. The staff makes her wait as they do paperwork, and then they pat her down, and then they make her wait some more. The handcuffs come off, which is nice enough, and then a nurse asks her some questions.  _Do you get migraines? Are you pregnant? Do you have any allergies?_ Pidge answers no, no, no, and then waits some more. It feels like it should be a scary process, but Pidge doesn't feel much of anything that's not tired.

The shower is nice. She doesn't get as much time as she'd wanted, but the blood all washes away after some hard scrubbing. It's weird, watching it go down and knowing that the blood had once been  _in_ Lance, had once been circulating through his veins and keeping him alive. The jumpsuit that they give her is ugly and a painful reminder of the fact that she's  _here,_ but it at least doesn't have blood on it.

It must be more like early morning than night when she finally enters the cell, where she should have spent the night if she'd just been a few hours earlier. There are two other women in there, one sitting on the bottom bunk of her bed while the other is lying down and facing the wall. "You'll be here for the first few nights," the officer tells her. "When's your bail hearing?"

"The third," Pidge says. She doesn't know what day it is, so she can't say how far away until she (hopefully) gets out of here. She could ask, but she doesn't particularly want to be yelled at by a prison guard.

"That's the day after tomorrow. You're lucky." The guard leaves, after that, without telling Pidge what she should be doing. She just blinks and looks around the room - there are two empty beds, one above the woman sitting up and the other below the woman still asleep. Pidge opts for the lower one, placing the measly belongings that she'd been given at the foot of the bed.

"She's right, you're lucky," the woman on the bed says. "I'm here for four more months. Romelle's got three." She nods up to the top bunk, and Pidge risks a short glance to the person sleeping up there. All she can really see is a mass of blonde hair.

Pidge opens her mouth, and then closes it. She knows that not all inmates can be like in the movies, tough and sketchy and violent, but she doesn't want to take that risk, either. "Maybe it will go by fast," she offers, sitting down on the bunk. She's lucky that she's short enough that her head doesn't even hit the top bunk. "Plus, I might be back here in the end anyway, so..."

"Ah," the inmate says. She's quite pretty, even though her hair is unkempt and her face looks tired. "Well, I guess I'm lucky, too, because I've already undergone that process. What's your name?"

"Katie," Pidge says. She almost says  _Pidge,_ but when she even thinks of her nickname, she just thinks of the way that Lance had said it.  _Pidge, don't do anything._ She knows that she should correlate the nickname to Matt, since he came up with it, but everything seems to be going back to Lance. "What's yours?"

"Allura," is the answer. "Are you the girl that was on the news?"

Pidge blinks. She had kind of assumed that being in here, nobody would know about her and what she'd done. "Probably," she admits. "It's... a long story."

"I'm not asking," Allura says, and that's a gift in itself.

(Allura and Romelle stick by her side for the forty-nine hours that Pidge is there. She's grateful, really, but she hopes that she'll never have to see them again.)

 

* * *

 

Her mugshot had gone viral in the time that she'd spent in jail. Her eyes are red and there are tear tracks trailing down her cheeks, but her gaze is hardened, straight into the camera with her jaw locked. There's blood matted in her hair and darkened against her skin, Lance's blood, which just makes her feel sick. She hadn't seen it on the television in the jail due to not being allowed to watch local television, but she sees it now almost every time that she goes online. There's hers, and then there's Lance's. _Lance McClain,_ his full name apparently is. He looks so normal in his picture, even though it must have been taken just a few days after he'd been shot. He looks the same as the last day that she'd seen him. He's smirking. ( _He's healthy,_ she thinks, and it's like a crushing weight is finally off of her shoulders.  _He's going to be okay._ )

The comments that she reads on social media range from largely sympathizing with her to calling for her head on a stick. Some romanticize the crime spree, comparing her and Lance to Bonnie and Clyde. They say that she's the smart girl who went dumb for the pretty guy, or they say that she's the real victim here.

It's horrifying, how much slack that she's getting. She wasn't kidnapped, she wasn't abused. Lance had been good to her, had checked in on her whenever they were going to do something wild...

Matt catches her on the replies section of a tweet from CBS with her face on it. "That's not healthy, Pidge," he says, gentle as ever, and weasels the phone away from her. "If Daniel Radcliffe is too good for Twitter, than you are, too."

"I'm not Harry Potter," Pidge says, and her voice is in that monotone that it always seems to be lately. She doesn't know how to feel anything anymore. Lance had made her feel every emotion that there every could possibly be to feel, but now he's behind bars and he has taken her soul with him. "I'm a 'thieving bitch', apparently. Oh, and there was one that said I'd 'totally be dating material if I weren't a slut with a gun kink,' which I thought was especially charming."

"Pidge," Matt says, firmly this time. He leans down next to where she's sitting so that they're eye-to-eye. "You know what people are like. They don't know anything about the case, but they have to have an opinion anyway."

The fact that he's being so nice to her makes something feel bitter in the back of Pidge's throat, heavy and twisted. "Why are you even talking to me," she grumbles, breaking the eye contact so that she can stare at her shoes instead. "It's not like I had a gun to my head the entire time. I did all of those horrible things."

Matt presses a kiss to her forehead, and it's the most familial affection that she's gotten in months. She feels like she should be crying, but she doesn't know if she feels anything. "Because you're my little sister," he tells her, "and I've known you for over twenty years. You're kind, and you're smart, and you're witty as hell. You have been there for me, and now I'm here for you, okay? I know that you don't see things the way that I do right now, but I hope that someday you will."

Pidge sighs, shaky, wondering what to say to that. She could thank him, tell him that he's wrong and beg him to see her side about Lance, but she knows that they'll all chalk it up to some sort of mental health issue instead of _listening_ to her, and that's not it at all. "I had no idea what I was getting into," she says instead, because it's true. She'd expected a week of fun and extra cash and maybe a little sex if she was up for it, but instead she had gotten months of guns and tenderness and dare she even think the word _love_?

"I'm so sorry," she adds on, because that's true, too. She feels so horribly that her family is now under the public eye because of her and her poor decisions. She feels bad about the bail money, about the reporters, about everything. There's more that she could say, about how she'd do it differently, about how she wishes that she could go back in time, but ... does she? Does she really?

"I know," Matt tells her, and wraps her into a hug. "Everything's going to be better from here on out, okay? I'll be here every step of the way. I promise."

Pidge should feel sad, or relieved, or anxious, but she just feels ill.

 

* * *

 

She waits for somebody to ask her what really happened.

Her mother doesn't ask. Colleen asks to start brushing her hair again, like she had when Pidge was little. For about ten minutes each morning, she lets her mother comb through it. They don't talk, but Colleen will hum a little tune, and it's noise enough. She tries to tell her mother, once, about Lance, and about how she really, truly cares about him, but her mother starts crying at the mention of his name and she can't force herself to finish the sentence.

Her father doesn't ask. He talks so much about the future, about how once the trial is over and done with and they've all moved on with their lives, she can decide what she wants to do. He says that if she still wants to look at apartments, she can do that, but that he and Colleen understand if she wants to live with them for a few more years. He has so many plans about the future, so much  _hope,_ and Pidge isn't sure if she wants to squish it just yet. He'll find out eventually, when the court rules her guilty for all of the things that she's done.

Her attorney doesn't ask. Pidge had expected that at least  _he_ would, if not just to know what he was getting into, but he doesn't. He asks about specific things - like what days they were where, and if she knows who took that photograph of them. She answers as best as she can, and once she tries to say  _wait, I need to tell you the truth,_ but he doesn't let her.

She waits, and she waits, but nobody wants to know.

 

* * *

 

The trial itself is a blur.

They doll her up real pretty, straightening her hair and giving her Matt's glasses back so that she can look like the good nerdy girl that they want her to be. She's not allowed to talk, and she's not going on the stand, so all that she has to do is stand there and not make any outbursts. She sees a glance of jumpsuit-orange out of the corner of her eye, and her heart jolts with something both anxious and hopeful. She doesn't look back, because she knows that if she does, she won't look away.

Half of the evidence that they have involving her, she doesn't remember taking part in at all. They talk about a psychological evaluation - did that happen? She did that, right? She vaguely remembers a therapist's office, but she can't remember the face of who she was talking to, or what they talked about. 

Analysts mention  _Stockholm_ _syndrome_ and the prosecutor makes a snide remark in response about Pidge simply being an awfully good actress. She's  _not_ acting, though. If she were allowed to speak, she would  _beg_ them to see her side, to drop the kidnapping charge off of Lance's list so that he can get a shorter sentence. There's no way that he's not going to get jail time - Pidge had accepted that the minute that she had realized that he was  _alive._ But what if it's a difference of twenty or thirty years if she just makes them realize that she went along with  _everything_?

How hard of a punishment is it if she talks, anyway? Do they postpone the trial? Is there some stupid fine? If they'd told her, she hadn't been listening. 

Matt is a character witness for her. He tells a story about the time when she was thirteen that she had sobbed because she accidentally gave the cashier a dollar short and she felt guilty that they didn't notice, and he talks about how  _smart_ she is, about all of the wonderful plans that she has. He cries when he talks about the day she left, but all Pidge can do is stare down at the floor and _ache._

And then, they call Lance's name.

She wonders why he's even here. He has his own trial, for his  _own_ crimes, so why is he at hers? No one had mentioned to her that he was on the witness list, or maybe they had and she'd just forgotten. She seems to be doing a lot of that nowadays.

It's hard to look away from him once he's been called. He looks... clean. His hair is combed back, and his skin is as clear as it was when she had last seen him two months ago. She had looked similarly orderly when she had first walked in here, but she's not sure if she still does, since there's a pretty good chance that the devastated feeling in her gut has made its way towards her face. He's in a prison jumpsuit, though, and Pidge realizes that he hadn't made bail, either through not being deemed safe to being on the loose or not having anybody to pay it for him. She's not sure which one is sadder.

He looks at her once, fleetingly, while he walks to the stand. She thinks that she sees the twitch of a smile, the softening of his eyes, but God, is she imagining it? Is she projecting on him now? She wouldn't have even thought of it a day ago, but the fact that almost everybody in this courtroom seems to be convinced that she's suffering from some kind of Stockholm syndrome is... chilling. It makes her doubt her own brain, and she's never done that before.

She watches as Lance swears in, and, briefly, Pidge wonders if he'd been forced to testify. There's no way that his attorney would have let him if he weren't, right? Isn't that a bad idea? _Maybe it's so that he can throw you under the bus and blame you for everything,_ a part of her brain thinks. _But he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't do that at all._

The first few questions that he's asked are easy. Where he's from, what his occupation was before he left. Pidge is so tuned in to the sound of his voice, the way that his pitch rises at the beginning of each sentence, just a little, and how there's the cool tone underneath as if he has everything under control, that she forgets to actually listen to what he's saying. He doesn't look at her. He doesn't look at her once.

It's when Pidge's own attorney gets up that she tunes back in to what's actually going on. "Mr. McClain," he says, with the confident energy of someone who has been in the courtroom at least a thousand times by now, "when and where did you first meet my client?"

"December third," Lance says, as if he has it committed to memory by now. Maybe he does. "I went by her house that night."

"Why?" her attorney asks, voice sharp. Lance doesn't wince underneath the tone. In fact, he doesn't react at all.

"I heard around that she was good with tech. I needed someone to help me. I thought that she could be the one to do it." Pidge remembers his lips against the back of his hand, her mother swooning over him, Matt's teasing. That seems so long ago, now. She wonders if Matt and her mother feel guilty over how trusting they were. She hopes that they don't regret anything - this is all her fault, after all.

"You met with her at the coffee shop Aroma Mocha the next morning at ten in the morning, correct?"

"Yes, that's correct." The turned-off cameras, the sweetness of her mocha, her phone buzzing with desperate text messages. Most people her age make stupid decisions by having unprotected sex or taking a handful of party drugs. Why hadn't Pidge gone down that route instead of following Lance out of that building?

... Who is she kidding? She would follow him anywhere. If he wanted her to run out of here right now and meet her in some getaway car, she'd do it. He'd only have to say the word.

"What did the two of you talk about?" is the next question. Pidge tries to remember the answer to that question herself. She mainly remembers the way that Lance had leaned back, the way that he had said _I could use a girl like you._

"I asked her about how she was progressing through school so fast," Lance says, and he stares up at the ceiling, now, almost as if he's bored. "I asked her about her experience with computers, and if she'd help me with some future projects."

"Did you tell her the full extent of what those projects would entail?"

"No," Lance says, as if he's answering a question about if he likes wine or if he's a Virgo. The answer makes Pidge blink. Hadn't he?

"What happened next?" The silence in between each question is cutthroat. It's almost as if everybody in this courtroom is waiting with bated breath to see if Lance slips up, to see if he digs himself into a hole that he can't get out of.

"I told her that I wanted her to get into my car with me. We left." He punctuates the last sentence with a shrug, and he turns his head to look down through the audience. Pidge is too immobilized to turn around to see who he's looking at. Had his family come? Was it somebody that she knew?

"Did you tell her where you were headed?"

"No." _Somewhere very far away_ , he'd said. Not a state or city, Pidge supposes, but it had been enough for her at the time.

"Did you tell her how long you would be gone?"

"No," Lance says again. Pidge feels bile in her throat. He had, right? He'd said that-

Oh my God. He's lying. He's lying for her.

Why would he do that? Why would he do that when he'll probably be in prison for the rest of his life and she'll get away with a slap on the wrist? Why, why, why? He barely  _knows_ her! It's been a few months since this has all started, and he'd only been with her for two of them. Why would he  _do_ this?

When it had been about the both of them getting out okay, they'd covered their tracks. They'd cleaned out security cameras and worn gloves and Pidge had had this beautifully constructed story about how he had taken her, but that was before. That was before she had danced with him, before she had breathed in his air and before she had  _loved_ him, dark and volatile and nothing substantial. That was when she was supposed to go home and he was supposed to spend a few more years bouncing around with a gun and stolen cash. That was  _before._

She'd been so, so careful. Pidge wishes that she had fucked up.

"I have just one more question, Mr. McClain." Her attorney says, smooth and sweet. He says the next few words with great enunciation, as if each word is its own sentence. "Would you have let her _leave_?"

"Objection, Your Honor-"

Lance smiles, and glances Pidge's way. She nearly chokes under his gaze, hot and intense and incredibly unreadable. She feels her lips mouth his name, and she almost tries to stand, but she feels rooted into her seat as if her legs are made of stone. "Of course not," he says, and then so many people start yelling at once that Pidge loses focus, instead deciding to cut off the eye contact and stare blankly at the table in front of her.

(When they say _not guilty,_ she doesn't remember screaming. She just remember hands on her, begging her to stop.)

 

* * *

 

"Did he make you happy?"

"He did."

"Do you want to see him again?"

"Yes."

"Will you?"

"No."

(Her court-mandated therapist hums and writes something down. It wouldn't be fair to Lance to visit him a few times in prison and then never again for the remainder of his forty-year sentence, so it's better for her to never start at all.)

 

* * *

 

She decides to officially withdraw from her PhD program, even though she'd gotten an offer to restart there at the beginning of the next semester. Her father doesn't like the idea, thinks that she should have something to do with her brain every day, but her mother and Matt say that it's for the best that she takes a break. (In truth, she just can't hear the words  _University of Vermont_ without thinking about how Lance had sounded when he'd said the phrase, with exaggerated formalities and a curt tone.)

Winter is there only in remnants, in the leaves that haven't quite regrown on the trees and the patches of mud that were once snow and ice. She had missed the Vermont winters when she'd been away, but she supposes that she'll have many more. She doesn't really plan on leaving any time soon, not until she can get a plan settled.

The secretary in the admissions office stares at Pidge as though she has two heads when she makes a request to meet with her counselor. She tries to be polite, she really does, but most of her sentences end up clipped and short. It's so hard for pleasantries nowadays. She just wants everybody to tell her what they want with her so that they can leave her alone.

Her admissions counselor is gentle with her, but Pidge isn't good enough at reading people to determine how much of it is fake. She just  _mhm_ sand  _uh-huh_ s and apologizes until she finally is officially withdrawn. She probably could have done this online, since the majority of the process is done on her admissions counselor's computer, but it's nice being on campus. It's nice seeing it again, since it will probably be the last time. Last time in a long time, anyway.

Stepping out of the office and into the cool spring air feels like something big. It feels like closing a chapter, even though she can't pinpoint which one.

She's not allowed to drive - not due to any law, but due to the fact that she had started trembling when her father asked her if she wanted to go on a drive. It's weird, how her body feels things that her brain hasn't caught up to yet. She shakes when she's not anxious, her heart beats fast when she's not scared. Maybe she is, somewhere deep down, but there's some sort of barrier in between her body and her mind.

There are traces of happiness, too, that sometimes make themselves known in her body. She can feel them with a jolt whenever Matt grins at her the same way he had when they were eight and mud-covered, or when she rereads an old book that she used to love. They're barely there, but they do exist, gentle and soft and wisps that she's terrified will go away at any moment.

When Pidge is waiting on the sidewalk near the parking lot for Matt to come by and pick her up, she sees somebody out of the corner of her eye. She almost doesn't recognize him, since everything has changed since the last time, but after blinking away her doubt, her mind makes the connection. Hunk.

She doesn't know what to do, doesn't  _plan_ on doing anything, but he turns to face her, away from the jacket-clad guy that he'd been talking to. He stills, clearly recognizing her, and she watches as he places a gently hand on his friend's shoulder, as if to say goodbye. Pidge doesn't realize that he's coming to talk to her until he's already taking a few steps.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

"Pidge!" a voice calls, and she turns to see Matt hanging out of a driver's seat window. His facial expression is knit with a concern that he won't yet voice, leaving her to wonder how much of her panic is visible on her features. "You ready?"

Thank God. "Yes," she says, and she scrambles into the car as fast as she can. "Drive fast. I'll explain once we're gone."

When Matt peels out of the parking lot, it almost feels like they're driving away from a robbery.

 

* * *

 

Pidge stares at the unopened box of hair clippers that she had bought on impulse, and then back at herself in the mirror above the sink.

She looks normal. She looks like the girl in the picture that Matt had spread when she'd been missing, and she looks like the girl who had been dolled up for court. It's  _appalling,_ the fact that she looks as though she's just come back from a class or a study group. She seems so achingly  _ordinary,_ like a dream that she wants but cannot have.

No more of that.

She opens the box of hair clippers slowly, pulling out the long cord and the different sizes. She doesn't know much about it - hadn't really thought about the difference between a five and a four. She'll go with a five for now, she supposes, and can always go shorter if she needs to.

Pidge hacks away at the majority of her hair with a pair of scissors, letting the locks fall into the sink. She barely looks into the mirror while she does it, just hacking and yanking until her the strands no longer goes below her chin. It's only then that she grabs the hair clippers and plugs them in, turning them on and running them over her scalp before she can think twice about it. She does so again and again until all of her hair is on the counter, her shirt, and the sink, and when she runs her hands through, her hair feels prickly instead of soft.

The person in the mirror looks different. The facial features are all the same, of course, but the long locks that she had once hid behind are now gone. The buzz cut is something that she'd never planned on having, and she hadn't done the  _best_ job with it, but it works well enough. She feels naked, not having her hair to frame her face, but regardless of that, she doesn't feel as though she'll regret it.

She can't stop touching her scalp. Her hair is  _gone._ The hair that her mother had brushed, the hair that Lance had braided, the hair that had been misinterpreted as a sign of neglect. It's in the sink, and she'll  _never_ have hair that Lance has touched again.

For the first time after Lance, she cries. It starts off small, just sniffing and wiping at her eyes, but she ends up heaving with her own sobs, nose running and red-faced. She crumples into a ball on the floor and weeps, loudly enough that she's sure that it echoes throughout the house. Her eyes hurt from the dehydration and her arms sting from where her fingers dig in, sharp and twisted. She hears footsteps stomp up the stairs, hears her name spoken with Matt's panic, but all of the sounds are muted under the sound of her own agony.

For the first time after Lance, she really, truly  _feels._

**Author's Note:**

> Trivia: This was the third planned ending. The first ending was supposed to have Lance die when he got shot, and then have Pidge succeed in getting herself killed right after. It was gonna be all Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque, but unnecessarily glorifying/romanticizing their shitty situation. The next planned ending was supposed to be they both go to prison for a long, long time, and they send each other love letters whenever they can. That seemed more apt, but too cheesy, too perfect- infatuations based off of danger are never sustainable for long-term relationships. So here we are with the last ending, which I hope you guys find to be satisfying, since I think that there's no way that the two of them could end up happy. 
> 
> I don't want any criticism or negative feedback tbh, I don't mind if I have 42930249 typos, I just really only want the comments to be a positive space! Writing fics is just for fun and shouldn't be something I need to turn into a chore in order for my stuff to be "worth writing". Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoyed!


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